Reporters Without Borders
Lebanon19 January 2007
New TV journalists held for past month on theft charges
Reporters Without Borders has written to Lebanese information minister
Ghazi Aridi urging him to do everything possible to obtain the release
of New TV journalists Firas Hatoum and Abdel-Azim Khayat, and their
driver Mohammed Barbar, who have been held since 19 December for
entering the apartment of a key witness in the murder of former Prime
Minister Rafik Hariri.
"These journalists have been in prison for a month now," the press
freedom organisation said. "We will remain on alert until they are
freed. We call on the authorities to stop considering this as a
criminal case. These three men are not thieves but journalists who
were acting in a professional capacity. If they must be punished, then
it should be done according to the press law."
The staff of New TV, a satellite news station based in Beirut, staged
a demonstration on 17 January outside the information ministry to
demand the release of their colleagues. Other Lebanese journalists and
cameramen participated in the protest.
Aridi refused to come out and talk to them, and he said in a statement
that there was no possibility of intervening in the case because it
was not a press freedom issue. He also said it was hurting the
international investigation into Hariri's assassination in February
2005.
New TV news director Mariam Bassam told Reporters Without Borders the
authorities had no right to keep Hatoum, Khayet and Barbar locked up
as they had just been doing their job as journalists. She said she was
amazed by the rigidity of the justice ministry's position on this
case, especially as the station's relations with the ministry had been
good. The ministry had to be aware that the journalists' intentions
had not been bad, she said.
The three New TV employees were arrested on 19 December for entering
the apartment of Mohammed Zouheir Siddik, a leading prosecution
witness in the Hariri murder. They had obtained Siddik's permission to
go to his apartment and there was no sign outside saying it was
forbidden to enter.
Instead of being prosecuted under the press law, they have been
charged with theft under criminal law and face between three and eight
years in prison.